Speech, inking, typing, and privacy

To improve your device’s ability to correctly recognize your pronunciation and handwriting, Microsoft collects speech, inking, and typing information when you interact with your Windows device by speaking, writing, or typing. If you’ve allowed Cortana to do so, Microsoft also collects information about your Calendar and People (also known as contacts) to help personalize your speech experience and helps Windows and Cortana better recognize people, events, places, and music when you dictate messages or documents. The information collected by Cortana will help personalize your speech experience on all your Windows devices and Cortana apps when you sign in with the same Microsoft Account.

Whenever we collect data, even when it’s to make your device work better for you, we want to make sure you have all the information to make the right choices about how and when that data is used. That’s why we provide the info and controls described on this page.

To use voice input, Getting to know you (the privacy setting for Speech) must be turned on. This is because speech services exist both in the cloud and on your device. And the info Microsoft collects from these services in turn helps to improve them. Speech services that don’t rely on the cloud and only live on your device, like Narrator and Windows Speech Recognition, will still work when this setting is turned off; but Microsoft won’t collect any speech data.

How to control data for Speech, inking, and typing

To stop letting Microsoft use your typing and handwriting info to improve typing and writing services:

Go to Start , then select Settings  > Privacy > General.

Turn off Send Microsoft info about how I write to help us improve typing and writing in the future.

To turn off speech recognition and to clear data stored on the device: